Map showing all locations mentioned on Wikipedia article:

The
Mississippi River is part of the Missouri-Mississippi
river system, which is the largest river system in North America
and among the largest in the world: By length— —it is the fourth longest, and by its average
discharge of 572,000 cu ft/s (16,200 m³/s), it is the tenth
largest.

The name Mississippi is derived from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi ("Great
River") or gichi-ziibi ("Big River").

Geography

From its
origin at Lake
Itasca to St. Louis, Missouri, the flow of the Mississippi River is moderated by
43 dams.Fourteen of these dams are located above
Minneapolis,
Minnesota in the headwaters region
and serve multiple purposes including power generation and
recreation. The remaining 29 dams beginning in downtown
Minneapolis all contain locks and were constructed to permit
commercial navigation of the upper river. Taken as a whole these 43
dams significantly shape the geography and influence the ecology of
the upper river. Beginning just below Saint Paul,
Minnesota and continuing throughout the upper and lower
river, the Mississippi is further controlled by thousands of wing
dikes that moderate the river's flow in order to maintain an open
navigation channel and prevent the river from eroding its
banks.

The Mississippi River runs through 10 states and was used to define portions of these
states' borders. The middle of the riverbed at the time the borders
were established was the line to define the borders between states.
The river
has since shifted, but the state borders of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi have not changed; they still follow the former bed
of the Mississippi River as of their establishment.

Upper Mississippi River

The upper
Mississippi River is divided into three sections: the headwaters, ;
from the source to Saint Anthony Falls; a series of man-made lakes between Minneapolis and
St. Louis,
Missouri, ; and the middle Mississippi, , a relatively
free-flowing river downstream of the confluence with the Missouri
River at St. Louis.

Source

The
source of the Upper Mississippi River is Lake Itasca, above sea level in Itasca State Park located in Clearwater County, Minnesota. The name "Itasca"is a combination of the
last four letters of the Latin word for truth (veritas)
and the first two letters of the Latin word for head
(caput).

The
uppermost lock and dam on the Mississippi River is the Upper St.
Anthony Falls Lock and Dam in Minneapolis. Above the dam, the river's elevation is .
Below the dam, the river's elevation is . This drop is the largest
of all the Mississippi River locks and dams. The origin of the
dramatic drop is a waterfall preserved adjacent to the lock under
an apron of concrete. Saint Anthony Falls is the only true waterfall on the entire
Mississippi River. The water elevation continues to drop
steeply as it passes through the gorge carved by the waterfall.
By the
time the river reaches Saint Paul, Minnesota, below Lock and Dam #1, it has dropped more than
half its original elevation and is above sea level. From St.
Paul to St. Louis Missouri the river elevation falls much more
slowly and is controlled and managed as a series of pools created
by 26 locks and dams. From St. Louis to the Ohio River confluence,
the Mississippi free falls a total of over a distance of for an
average rate of . At the Ohio River confluence the Mississippi is
above sea level.

Communities along the river

Many of the communities along the Mississippi River are listed
below. They have either historic significance or cultural lore
connecting them to the river. They are ordered from the beginning
of the river to its end.

Bridge crossings

The first bridge across the Mississippi River was built in 1855.
It
spanned the river in Minneapolis where the current Hennepin
Avenue Bridge is located.

The first railroad bridge across the Mississippi was built in 1856.
It
spanned the river between the Rock Island Arsenal and Davenport, Iowa. Steamboat captains of the day, fearful
of competition from the railroads, considered the new bridge "a
hazard to navigation". Two weeks after the bridge opened, the
steamboat Effie Afton rammed part of the bridge and
started it on fire. Legal proceedings ensued, with Abraham Lincoln defending the railroad.
The
lawsuit went to the Supreme Court of the United
States and was eventually ruled in favor of the
railroad.

Below is a general overview of bridges over the Mississippi which
have notable engineering or landmark significance with its city.
They are ordered from the source to the mouth.

Chain of Rocks Bridge located on the northern edge of St. Louis; notable
for a 22-degree bend occurring at the middle of the crossing,
necessary for navigation on the river and was the route used by
U.S.Route 66 to cross over the Mississippi.

Eads Bridge combined road and railway bridge, connecting St.
Louis and East St. Louis, Illinois. When completed in 1874, it was the longest
arch bridge in the world, with an overall length of . The ribbed
steel arch spans were considered daring, as was the use of steel as
a primary structural material; it was the first such use of true
steel in a major bridge project.

Watershed

Mississippi watershed (2005)

The Mississippi River has the third largest drainage basin or "catchment" in the world.
The
basin covers more than , including all or parts of 31 states and
two Canadian provinces. The drainage basin empties
into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico about
downstream from New Orleans. Measurements of the length of the
Mississippi from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico vary somewhat,
but the United States
Geological Survey's number is . The retention time from Lake
Itasca to the Gulf is about 90 days.

Outflow

Fresh river water flowing from the Mississippi into the Gulf of
Mexico does not mix into the salt water immediately. The images
from NASA's MODIS to the
right show a large plume of fresh water, which appears as a dark
ribbon against the lighter-blue surrounding waters.

The images demonstrate that the plume did not mix with the
surrounding sea water immediately. Instead, it stayed intact as it flowed
through the Gulf of Mexico, into the Straits of Florida, and entered the Gulf
Stream.The Mississippi River water rounded the tip
of Florida and traveled up the southeast coast to the latitude
of Georgia before finally mixing in so thoroughly with the
ocean that it could no longer be detected by MODIS.

Discharge

The Mississippi river discharges at an annual average rate of
between 200 and 700 thousand cubic feet per second
(7,000–20,000 m3/s). Although it is the 5th largest
river in the world by volume, this flow is a mere fraction of the
output of the Amazon, which moves
nearly 7 million cubic feet per second
(200,000 m3/s) during wet seasons. On average, the
Mississippi has only 9% the flow of the Amazon River, but is nearly
twice that of the Columbia River and
almost 6 times the volume of the Colorado River.

History

Course changes

The Illinoian Glacier, about 300,000
to 132,000 years before present, blocked the Mississippi near Rock
Island, Illinois, diverting it to its present channel farther to
the west, the current western border of Illinois.

Other
changes in the course of the river have occurred because of
earthquakes along the New
Madrid Seismic Zone, which lies between Memphis and St.
Louis. Three earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, estimated at
approximately 8 on the Richter
magnitude scale, were said to have temporarily reversed the
course of the Mississippi. The settlement of Reverie,
Tennessee was cut off from Tipton
County, Tennessee, during the 1811 and 1812 earthquakes and
placed on the western side of the Mississippi River, the Arkansas
side.These earthquakes also created Reelfoot
Lake in Tennessee from the altered landscape near
the river. The faulting is related to an aulacogen (geologic term for a failed rift) that
formed at the same time as the Gulf of Mexico.

Through a natural process known as delta switching, the lower Mississippi
River has shifted its final course to the mouth of the Gulf of
Mexico every thousand years or so. This occurs because the deposits
of silt and sediment begin to clog its channel, raising the river's
level and causing it to eventually find a steeper, more direct
route to the Gulf of Mexico. The abandoned distributaries diminish
in volume and form what are known as bayous.
This
process has, over the past 5,000 years, caused the coastline of
south Louisiana to advance toward the Gulf from 15 to 50 miles
(25–80 km).The currently active delta lobe is called
the Birdfoot Delta, after its shape, or the Balize Delta, after
La
Balize, Louisiana, the first French settlement at the mouth of
the Mississippi.

Native Americans

The Cheyenne, one of the earliest
inhabitants of the upper Mississippi River, called it the
Máˀxe-éˀometaaˀe (Big Greasy River) in the Cheyenne language. However, the word
Mississippi comes from Messipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Algonquin) name for
the river, Misi-ziibi (Great River).

The
Ojibwe called Lake ItascaOmashkoozo-zaaga'igan (Elk Lake) and the
river flowing out of it Omashkoozo-ziibi (Elk
River).After flowing into Lake Bemidji, the Ojibwe called the river
Bemijigamaag-ziibi (River from the Traversing
Lake).After flowing into Cass
Lake, the name of the river changes to
Gaa-miskwaawaakokaag-ziibi (Red Cedar River) and then out
of Lake
Winnibigoshish as Wiinibiigoozhish-ziibi (Miserable
Wretched Dirty Water River), Gichi-ziibi (Big River) after
the confluence with the Leech Lake
River, then finally as Misi-ziibi (Great River) after
the confluence with the Crow Wing
River. After the expeditions by Giacomo Beltrami and Henry Schoolcraft, the longest stream
above the juncture of the Crow Wing River and Gichi-ziibi
was named "Mississippi River". The Mississippi River
Band of Chippewa Indians, known as the
Gichi-ziibiwininiwag, are named after the stretch of the
Mississippi River known as the Gichi-ziibi.

European exploration

On May 8, 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto became the first recorded
European to reach the Mississippi River,
which he called Río del Espíritu Santo ("River of the Holy
Spirit"), in the area of what is now Mississippi. In Spanish, the river is called Río
Mississippi.

In 1718,
about upriver, New Orleans was established along the river crescent
by Jean-Baptiste Le
Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, with construction patterned after
the 1711 resettlement on Mobile Bay of Mobile, the capital of French Louisiana at the
time.

Article 8 of the Treaty of
Paris states, "The navigation of the river Mississippi, from
its source to the ocean, shall forever remain free and open to the
subjects of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States".
With
this treaty, which ended the American Revolutionary War,
Britain also ceded West Florida back to Spain to regain The Bahamas, which Spain had occupied during the
war. Spain then had control over the river, south of 32°30'
north latitude and in what is known as the Spanish Conspiracy,
hoped to gain greater control of Louisiana and all of the west.
These hopes ended when Spain was pressured into signing Pinckney's Treaty in 1795.

So many settlers traveled westward through the Mississippi river
basin, as well as settled in it, that Zadok Cramer wrote a guide
book called The
Navigator, detailing the features and dangers and
navigable waterways of the area. It was so popular that he updated
and expanded it through 12 editions over a period of 25
years.

The first steamboat to travel the full length of the Mississippi
from the Ohio River to New Orleans was the New Orleans in
December 1811. Its maiden voyage occurred during the series of
New Madrid earthquake in
1811–12.

Steamboat transport remained a viable industry, both in terms of
passengers and freight until the end of the first decade of the
20th century. Among the several Mississippi River system steamboat
companies was the noted Anchor Line, which from 1859
to 1898 operated a luxurious fleet of steamers between St. Louis
and New Orleans.

In 1988, record low water levels provided an opportunity and
obligation to examine the climax of the wooden-hulled age. The
Mississippi fell to below zero on the Memphis gauge. Four and a
half acres of water craft remains were exposed on the bottom of the
Mississippi River at West Memphis, Arkansas. They dated to the late
19th to early 20th centuries. The State of Arkansas, the Arkansas
Archeological Survey, and the Arkansas Archeological Society
responded with a two-month data recovery effort. The fieldwork
received national media attention as good news in the middle of a
drought.

Two portions of the Mississippi were designated as American Heritage Rivers in 1997:
the lower portion around Louisiana and Tennessee, and the upper
portion around Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Missouri.

Campsite at the river in
Arkansas

21st century

In 2002,
Slovenian long-distance swimmer, Martin Strel, swam the entire length of the
river, from Minnesota to Louisiana, over the course of 68
days.

In 2005, the Source to Sea Expedition [2928] paddled the
Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers
to benefit the Audubon Society's Upper Mississippi River
Campaign.

Recreation

Water skiing

The
sport of water skiing was invented on
the river in a wide region between Minnesota and Wisconsin known as
Lake
Pepin.Ralph
Samuelson of Lake City, Minnesota, created and refined his skiing technique in
late June and early July 1922. He later performed the first
water ski jump in 1925 and was pulled along at by a Curtiss
flying boat later that year.

Navigation history

A clear channel is needed for the barges and
other vessels that make the main stem
Mississippi one of the great commercial waterways of the world.The task of maintaining a
navigation channel is the responsibility of the United States Army Corps
of Engineers, which was established in 1802. Earlier projects
began as early as 1829 to remove snags, close off secondary
channels and excavate rocks and sandbar.

Steamboats entered trade in the 1820s, so the period 1830 1850
became the golden age of steamboats. As there were few roads or
rails in the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, river traffic was an
ideal solution. Cotton, timber and food came down the river, as did
Appalachia coal. The port of New Orleans boomed as it was the
trans-shipment point to deep sea ocean vessels. As a result, the
image of the twin stacked, wedding cake Mississippi steamer entered
into American mythology. Steamers worked the entire route from the
trickles of Montana, to the Ohio river; down the Missouri and
Tennessee. To the main channel of the Mississippi. Only the arrival
of the railroads in the 1880s did steamboat traffic diminish.
Steamboats remained a feature until the 1920s. Most have been
superseded by pusher tugs. A few survive as icons—the Delta Queen and the River Queen
for instance.

A series of 29 locks and dams
on the upper Mississippi, most of which were built in the 1930s, is
designed primarily to maintain a deep channel for commercial
barge traffic. The lakes formed are also used
for recreational boating and fishing. The dams make the river
deeper and wider but do not stop it. No flood control is intended.
During periods of high flow, the gates, some of which are
submersible, are completely opened and the dams simply cease to
function. Below St. Louis, the Mississippi is relatively
free-flowing, although it is constrained by numerous levees and
directed by numerous wing dams.

19th century

Obstacles – Des Moines, Iowa/Illinois

In 1829, there were surveys of the two major obstacles on the upper
Mississippi, the Des Moines Rapids and the Rock Island Rapids,
where the river was shallow and the riverbed was rock. The Des Moines
Rapids were about 11 mi (18 km) long and just above the
mouth of the Des Moines River at
Keokuk,
Iowa.The Rock Island Rapids were between
Rock
Island and Moline, Illinois. Both rapids were considered virtually
impassable.

The
Corps of Engineers recommended the excavation of a 5 ft
(1.5 m) deep channel at the Des Moines Rapids, but work did not begin until after Lieutenant
Robert E.Lee endorsed the project in 1837. The Corps
later also began excavating the Rock Island Rapids. By 1866, it had
become evident that excavation was impractical, and it was decided
to build a canal around the Des Moines Rapids. The canal opened in
1877, but the Rock Island Rapids remained an obstacle.

In 1878, Congress authorized the Corps to establish a deep channel
to be obtained by building wing dams which direct the river to a
narrow channel causing it to cut a deeper channel, by closing
secondary channels and by dredging. The channel project was
complete when the Moline Lock, which bypassed the Rock Island
Rapids, opened in 1907.

Canal – St. Paul, Minnesota

To
improve navigation between St. Paul, Minnesota, and Prairie du
Chien, Wisconsin, the Corps constructed several dams on lakes in the
headwaters area, including Lake Winnibigoshish and Lake Pokegama. The dams, which were
built beginning in the 1880s, stored spring run-off which was
released during low water to help maintain channel depth.

In 1907, Congress authorized a deep channel project on the
Mississippi, which was not complete when it was abandoned in the
late 1920s in favor of the deep channel project.

20th century

Dam –Keokuk, Iowa

In 1913,
construction was complete on a dam at Keokuk, Iowa, the first dam below St. Anthony Falls.
Built by a private power company to generate electricity, the
Keokuk dam was one of the largest hydro-electric plants in the
world at the time. The dam also eliminated the Des Moines
Rapids.

Lock and Dam Nos. 1 & 2

1927 flood

Prior to the 1927 flood, the Corps' primary strategy was to close
off as many side channels as possible to increase the flow in the
main river. It was thought that the river's velocity would scour off bottom sediments, deepening the river and decreasing the
possibility of flooding.

The 1927 flood proved this to be so wrong that communities
threatened by the flood began to create their own levee breaks to
relieve the force of the rising river.

Rivers and Harbors Act – 1930

The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1930 authorized the channel project,
which called for a navigation channel 9 ft (2.7 m) deep
and 400 ft (120 m) wide to accommodate multiple-barge
tows.

This was achieved by a series of locks and dams, and by dredging.
Twenty-three new locks and dams were built on the upper Mississippi
in the 1930s in addition to the three already in existence.

Late 20th century

Until
the 1950s, there was no dam below Lock and Dam 26 at Alton,
Illinois.Chain of Rocks Lock (Lock and Dam No. 27), which consists of
a low-water dam and an long canal, was added in 1953, just below
the confluence with the Missouri River, primarily to bypass a
series of rock ledges at St. Louis. It also serves to protect the
St. Louis city water intakes during times of low water.

U.S. government scientists determined in the 1950s that the
Mississippi River was starting to switch to the Atchafalaya River channel because of its
much steeper path to the Gulf of Mexico. Eventually the Atchafalaya
River would capture the Mississippi River and become its main
channel to the Gulf of Mexico, leaving New Orleans on a side
channel. As a result, the U.S.Congress authorized a project called
the Old
River Control Structure, which has prevented the Mississippi River from
leaving its current channel that drains into the Gulf via New
Orleans.

Because the large scale of high-energy water flow threatened to
damage the structure, an auxiliary flow control station was built
adjacent to the standing control station. This US$ 300 million project was completed
in 1986 by the U.S.Army Corps Of
Engineers.

The
Old
River Control Structure also serve as a major floodgates that can be
opened to prevent flooding. Some of the pre-1927 strategy is
still in use today, the Corps actively cuts the necks of horseshoe bends, allowing the water to move faster
and reducing flood heights.

In popular culture

Literature

William Faulkner uses the
Mississippi River and Delta as the setting for many hunts
throughout his novels. It has been proposed
that in Faulkner's famous story, The
Bear, young Ike first begins his transformation into a
man, thus relinquishing his birthright to land in Yoknapatawpha County through his
realizations found within the woods surrounding the Mississippi
River.

Many of the works of Mark Twain deal
with or take place near the Mississippi River. One of his first
major works, Life on the
Mississippi, is in part a history of the river, in part a
memoir of Twain's experiences on the river, and a collection of
tales that either take place on or are associated with the river.
The river was noted for the number of bandits which called its
islands and shores home, including John Murrell who was a well-known
murderer, horse stealer and slave "re-trader". His notoriety was
such that author Twain devoted an entire chapter to him in Life
on the Mississippi, and Murrell was rumored to have an island
headquarters on the river at Island 37. Twain's most famous work,
Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, is largely a journey down the river. The
novel works as an episodic meditation on American culture with the
river having multiple different meanings including independence,
escape, freedom, and adventure.

Herman Melville's novel
The Confidence-Man
portrayed a Canterbury
Tales-style group of steamboat passengers whose
interlocking stories are told as they travel down the Mississippi
River. The novel is written both as cultural satire and a
metaphysical treatise. Like Huckleberry Finn, it uses the
Mississippi River as a metaphor for the larger aspects of American
and human identity that unify the otherwise disparate characters.
The river's fluidity is reflected by the often shifting
personalities and identities of Melville's "confidence man".

Gilfillan, Joseph A. "Minnesota
Geographical Names Derived from the Chippewa Language" in The
Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota: The Fifteenth
Annual Report for the Year 1886 (St. Paul: Pioneer Press
Company, 1887)